Beantown Rundown: Red Sox must prioritize signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto in free agency

Beantown Rundown: Red Sox must prioritize signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto in free agency

The Red Sox desperately need to upgrade their starting rotation, which makes Yoshinobu Yamamoto a very logical top target

The Boston Red Sox are entering a big offseason that will likely play a sizable role in determining what the future of the club looks like. After finishing with a 78-84 record for the second straight season, changes have already been made, as Chaim Bloom was fired and replaced with Craig Breslow as the team’s President of Baseball Operations. Immediately after taking over, Breslow is going to have to find a way to inject this team with talent.

Given how little Bloom did to update Boston’s actual major league roster, that shouldn’t be an overly daunting task for Breslow. The Red Sox had a solid lineup last year, but their pitching staff, both the starting rotation and the bullpen, needs a lot of work. We’ve already seen some movement on the market, with top options such as Aaron Nola and Sonny Gray signing new deals early in free agency.

It may make sense for the Red Sox to do whatever they can to try to lock up a top starter as quickly as possible, but their best course of action may be to wait and do whatever they can to sign Japanese phenom Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a massive deal. There are a lot of tantalizing options that are available this offseason, but Yamamoto would be the perfect fit for Boston. Let’s take a look at why that’s the case.

Why the Red Sox need to sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto in free agency

To understand why the Red Sox need Yamamoto so badly, it’s important to get a full grasp on their starting rotation situation. Boston’s rotation was pieced together all year long in 2023, and it led to them having arguably the worst group of starters in the entire league. Among the guys who started at least ten games for this club, none of them had an ERA under four. That’s not very good.

There are some reasons for encouragement at the spot. For starters, Brayan Bello enjoyed a strong season, even though he tailed off at the end of the year and settled in with a 4.24 ERA. Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock are both solid pitchers, and while they may be starting caliber guys, they both are better than their five-plus ERAs indicate.

But beyond that, there’s not much hope here. Chris Sale started 20 games, but he had a 4.30 ERA and is entering the final year of his contract. James Paxton should have been dealt at the trade deadline, but he wasn’t and he faltered down the stretch of the season. Nick Pivetta was solid, but it took a demotion to the bullpen to light a spark underneath him, and it’s fair to wonder what his future with Boston looks like.

All this is to say that Boston’s starting rotation needs top end talent. Sale is not an ace anymore, which is a hard truth this team should have accepted years ago. Bello could become that guy, but he feels more like a solid second starter than an actual ace. That’s where the talented Yamammoto comes into play.

Yamamoto has been pitching on the Orix Buffaloes in the Nippon Professional Baseball league since 2017 when he was 18 years old, and since then, he’s become the best pitcher in the league, and it isn’t particularly close. Yamamoto’s numbers are absolutely outrageous, and while he will face some challenges in his transition to the MLB, there’s no reason that he cannot become one of the best pitchers in the league.